The Kentucky Clerk Case

At the risk of feeling the wrath of my fellow Conservatives I have to state that the Kentucky clerk that is refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples is wrong. I know the automatic comparison to this case is the infamous gay wedding cake case, but in reality the two couldn’t be more different. In the wedding cake case what we were dealing with was a private business run by private citizens that in a free society have the right to run their business as they see fit. Under no circumstances should the personal religious freedoms of PRIVATE Citizens be trampled on by a state level privilege that isn’t even technically a right (i.e. marriage). Conversely, what we have in the clerk case is a PUBLIC employee whose sworn oath of office is to serve the people (all of the people) according to the prevailing laws of the land whether she agrees with those laws or not.

Before anyone goes and offers me up to the hangman consider this. Would you feel the same if a Muslim DMV clerk refused to issue drivers licenses to women because it violated their religious beliefs? Would you feel the same if a Jewish clerk refused to issue a food service license to an eatery that was going to offer up sausage pizza because it wouldn’t fit in with their own kosher dietary beliefs? When it comes to public servants executing the responsibilities of their office such viewpoints must be set aside. If you can’t perform your duties based on the rules you’ve sworn to uphold then you need to step aside to in favor of those who can.

As much as some might like to believe otherwise, what the clerk in Kentucky is doing isn’t related to God’s will simply because she’s not really preventing gay marriage anyway since those couples always have the option to apply for a license elsewhere. What she’s really doing is bringing a spotlight down upon herself. Meanwhile, she’s making true Christians look like overzealous nut jobs in much the same manner as we as Christians view the strict theological dictates of Sharia Law in the Islamic community. In truth, as I stated in my book, government should be in the business of uniformly protecting the rights of its citizens, but it shouldn’t be in the business of legislating morality simply because in a free society everyone’s morals are free to be different as long as they don’t directly interfere with the rights of others.

We each have our own personal thoughts on the whole gay issue. In a free society it’s OK to believe that homosexuality is a sin just as much as it is to believe it isn’t. In the end such issues are best left up to God to sort out. However, contrary to what anyone thinks we don’t have an obligation to accept anyone’s differences, but we do have an obligation to tolerate them whether we agree with them or not as long as they don’t directly interfere in our own lives. To put this in simple terms, it’s OK for a clerk to believe that homosexuality is a sin. However, it’s NOT OK to act on that belief by denying gays the same legal privileges as everyone else.